Starting back in 1995, Keith Devlin, a Stanford math professor and popular science writer, began making appearance’s on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, where he demystifies math questions, both large and small, that have a bearing on our everyday lives. Years later “The Math Guy,” as he’s otherwise called, has built up a complete sound archive of his radio appearances, which features 78 episodes recorded between 1995 and 2001. Here are a few fine examples:
- June 4, 2011 Any Way You Stack It, $14.3 Trillion Is A Mind-Bender. How can we comprehend the size of the current US national debt?
- October 23, 2010. Checking The Math Behind The Greenhouse Effect.
- June 5, 2010. Running the Numbers for the World Cup.
- July 4, 2009. Top 10 Reasons Why the BMI is Bogus.
- April 4, 2009. Another Father of the Hydrogen Bomb. The 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam.
- February 28, 2009. What do we need algebra for?
- December 27, 2008. ‘Hard Day’s Night’: A Mathematical Mystery Tour. Mathematical analysis of the opening chord and other Beatles music.
Again, you can access the complete archive here. H/T @Stanford.
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